Details about Night Mode on Nokia 9 PureView and how to use it right now

Nokia 9 PureView is Nokia Mobile’s cameraphone announced at MWC2019 that introduced the first penta-lens camera setup on the mobile market, and the 9 is still the only device that uses five cameras at the same time to capture images.

After seeing a lot of reviews of the Nokia 9, both from users and the media, we summed the device up as a great shooter in daylight, but at a cost of waiting 10+ seconds until a photo is processed. The device’s launch was always followed by “fingerprint sensor” problems, that was mostly fixed according to user reports with updates.

A camera area where Nokia 9 struggled a lot is taking photos in low-light conditions. Today, we might know more why. As we noticed early on, Nokia 9 PureView while shooting in dark conditions in the auto mode used some not optimal settings – like an ISO value of 6400 and shutter speed of just 1/30 sec.

When developing the Nokia 9 PureView penta-lens system, a huge challange for HMD Global and their partners at Light was to correctly stitch up to 20 images (5 cameras that take 4 frames each) to create a single shot. The challenge was overcome in daylight conditions where the Nokia 9 is capable of taking up to 240MP of information, but in low-light HMD encountered a lot of crashes and problems while trying to work with 240MP of data, so the company decided to restrict the photography options in low light to 60MP (5 cameras taking one shot), until they came up with solutions for correctly stitching multiple shots from multiple cameras for great night mode.

With some of the recent updates, Nokia Mobile enabled the capturing of up to 240MP of data in low-light conditions, but only while the user is in Pro mode. That was discovered and demonstrated by @bobovnikovalek, who shared some comparison shots on Twitter.

Nokia 9 PureView night mode is capable of taking four pictures with all five cameras, producing 240MP of image data to work with. The settings the Night Mode will be capable of using shutter speed of up to 1s, while now in auto the Nokia 9 is still capped at taking 60MP of image data with 1/30s shutter speed. The ISO values will range from ISO600 to ISO1200, while the shutter speed should be from 1/4s to 1s in night mode, and there should be a clever algorithm to determine which value will be optimal for the particular scene the user is taking.

These photos are made from the application that Hmd developed. By setting the settings like night mode.
As for the night mode from Google, here is a comparison with the night mode from Hmd(auto vs GCAMnight vs Nokia 9 nightmode) pic.twitter.com/ZI8Lcqqxwt

Nokia 9 PureView users can get a glimpse of Night Mode right now by simulating the recommended settings in the Pro Mode. Before, the Nokia 9 in lowlight didn’t take four photos per sensor, but only one, so now you can get better low light shots in pro mode when using ISO800 and 1/4s shutter speed just like @bobovnikovalek did in the photos he posted on Twitter. An important note is not to touch to focus when in Pro mode, because that will override the settings to the auto 1/30s shutter speed. The “Depth” taking has to be turned on.

The main problem Nokia Mobile encountered during the process of enabling the “Night mode” on Nokia 9 is high power consumption. I think that we could soon expect a dedicated “Night mode” to officially be available for the Nokia 9. If you think about it, Nokia 9 should be the ultimate “night mode” device because it already takes like 20 shots of the same scene and stitches them together, and that is basically what “Night mode” on other devices does, but with a single camera.

Hopefully Nokia Mobile will soon come out with more info regarding Night Mode. If you are a Nokia 9 users, do try taking some photos in low-light using the Pro mode and recommended settings and tell us the results in the comments down below. 🙂